Dodger Blues.

INDICATIONS that the Los Angeles Dodgers may be for sale and that former owner Peter O'Malley is among a group of investors interested in acquiring the team are sure to generate waves of giddy nostalgia throughout Southern California. But while many fans might welcome an ownership group other than the current Fox outfit, it's clear that the Dodgers' decade-long woes on and off the field have more to do with the intangibles of building a successful organization than with who is sitting in the owner's box.

After all, the Dodgers decline began well before Australian billionaire Rupert Murdoch, whose News Corp. owns Fox, bought the team in March 1998 after a half-century of O'Malley family stewardship. The Dodgers have not won a playoff game since their 1988 World Series victory over the Oakland Athletics, the team's longest drought in more than 60 years.

Tracing the path of the Dodgers' transformation from the most respected and well-run club in the big leagues to just another dysfunctional sports franchise inevitably leads back to the firing of longtime general manager Al Campanis, who was let go in 1987 after making racist comments about blacks on a national television program. Since Campanis' dismissal, the team of Branch Rickey, Jackie Robinson, Sandy Koufax and Fernando Valenzuela has slowly lost its luster. Questionable personnel decisions have been part of that, but a more nebulous and subtle change has also taken place. In the eyes of many fans, the once-beloved civic institution has devolved into a heartless corporate entity that is more concerned with the bottom line than what takes place between the foul lines.

In that respect, even some of those who mourned the end of the O'Malley era were excited about the deep-pocketed Fox taking over and spending whatever it would take to build a winner, much like New York Yankees owner George Steinbrenner, whose teams have won four out of the past five World Series under the guidance of General Manager Brian Cashman and Manager Joe Torre.

And spend Fox has; the Dodgers once again have one of the highest payrolls in the league this year. But win they have not. Granted, the team as of late last week did hold a slim lead in the National League West Division, but if recent history is any indicator, that lead will slip away as the season progresses. For all of Fox's dollars, the Dodgers have played mediocre ball during the Murdoch era, while simultaneously becoming the laughing stock of the league through bad trades, inflated contracts and frequently scandalous behavior.

Even Bob Daly, the former Warner Bros. chief and true-blue Dodger fan who was brought on to run the organization after Fox executives made a mess of things, has done little to right the ship. His big moves so far have been hiring and firing Kevin Malone, the ineffective general manager who was canned for challenging a San Diego Padre fan to a fight. Perhaps Malone should have considered that the player he was defending at the time (Gary Sheffield) was the same person who had called his boss (Daly) a liar for refusing to renegotiate Sheffield's $10 million annual salary.

So it goes in Dodgerland, the once-proud franchise reduced to a second-rate soap opera.

Perhaps O'Malley and his group -- led by Casey Wasserman, scion of the Wasserman entertainment clan and owner of the Los Angeles Avengers of the Arena Football League -- could bring the pride and winning ways back to Chavez Ravine, if they did in fact buy the team. But the key to success is getting the right people in two crucial positions -- general manager and manager. If the Yankees can get it right, and they have, so can the Dodgers.